Weekly KAOS, 7/24/26

The third head of Iran's Cerberus Awakes as Oil Finally Bites

Welcome to the Weekly KAOS — UrbanKaoboy’s end-of-week roundup covering Macro and Geopolitics, where I try and tease out the most impactful bits of the week.

Themes of the Week

The third head of Iran's Cerberus stirs at Bab al-Mandeb, Oil finally bites with Brent back through $100, and cheap Chinese open models flood in as Washington eyes a soft ban

In Greek mythology, Cerberus is the three-headed hound guarding the gate to the underworld, and I have argued that Iran runs its own three-headed beast: the Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi network I keep calling my H³ Cerberus. Two of those heads have been beaten down to stumps over the past year, which always left the uncomfortable question of when the third would wake. This was the week it did.

The Houthis declared a maritime embargo on Saudi Arabia and then made good on it, claiming strikes on tankers in the Red Sea, and just like that Bab al-Mandeb becomes the chokepoint that matters, not the Strait of Hormuz everyone has been staring at.

And here is the twist the Oil bulls have waited three weeks for: crude yawned through live fire in Hormuz all month, and this week it finally bit, with Brent pushing back through $100 as a second chokepoint lit up.

Quieter but arguably bigger runs the other Geopolitical flashpoint: a flood of cheap Chinese open models, Kimi and Qwen, is potentially dragging Washington toward a de facto soft ban, even as the Warsh Fed still has to weigh genuine Disinflation against an Oil bid that just woke up.